The Evolution Of A New Media

Author: Jeff Dickey on 2008-07-10 07:44:03

We are at the very beginning of a transformative communications revolution where technology has enabled the "un-tethering" of the masses from fixed communications points. The cell phone, lap top computer and wireless Internet have made communications mobile and persistent. Digital signage has taken digital video screens out of the home and in to virtually every location imaginable.

Digital signage is most often viewed with a relatively micro lens that is largely focused on its current and emerging capabilities in the context of the 21st century marketing mix. This is fair enough, as those who decide to deploy screens into a vast array of locations need to find a way to justify these deployments through a variety of ways including a number of "ROI" measurements that include everything from the average size of a market basket to advertising revenue generated. As a result the hundreds, and eventually thousands, of digital signage networks and millions of locations that will be "screened up" over the next decade need to start considering what this means in the larger scheme of things.

Digital signage is on the verge of becoming a truly mass media that, within a decade, should reach more people on a daily basis than traditional television, radio or newspapers. It is not television and it is not the Internet. It is a little of both and a lot of neither. It is an "opt-in" medium that must work in both a sounded and non-sounded environment. It is a communications medium, a marketing and promotional medium and a CRM medium. And, in combination with all of these attributes, it may well also end up an entertainment, news and public safety medium.

My hypothesis is this: Digital signage will become the "third leg" of the media stool, sitting side by side with television and the Internet. It will achieve this status at the expense of printed newspapers, broadcast radio, circulars and some broadcast television – but not cable television. It will develop its own, unique creative formats that will look a lot more like Second Life and video games than television. It will also be largely unsounded, relying on text, animation, graphics and, potentially, podcast/bluetooth downloads to message to the consumer.

This is both the great opportunity and daunting task of this emerging media. What exactly, is this thing going to look like and how do we get there sooner than later? It is also the responsibility of those of "us" who wish to be a part of this story to get straight on what exactly it’s going to take to drive digital signage to its greatest potential. And, to be clear, "us" isn’t just the screen owner, the location owner or the content provider. It is incumbent upon the marketer to become a part of "us" sooner than later, as they are now facing an enormous generational shift in both media consumption and buying habits that will drive brand awareness and adoption for decades to come. This is not a curve anyone wants to get behind.

Digital signage can be a leader in the transformation of communications or allow other media like mobile media and the Internet to lead as we follow. Personally, leadership works a lot better for me.

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The Power of In-store "Proxemic Marketing"

Author: Laura Davis-Taylor on 2008-06-10 21:06:22

In doing some research due diligence, I recently ran across a very intriguing white paper by way of the LevelVision folks, the company behind the Intellimat digital floor signs. Entitled "The Psychology of the Floor", it's written by Ph.D. Joseph King of Radford University. Although created in support of the LevelVision floor device, I found some powerful information applicable to Marketing at Retail in general.

In a nutshell, the article talks about the human Orienting Reflex (OR), a physiological mechanism that forces us to redirect our attention to a specific stimulus. The research indicates that when attention is directed upward it is often to expand the focus of our attention in order to take in as much as possible.  However, when our attention is directed downward, we tend to narrow our attention focus and really hone in. This stems from our ancestral roots, when the survival instinct triggered us to pay extra attention when looking downward to avoid safety hazards such as holes, snakes and trip hazards.

Also interesting is the POV shared that although many advertisers rely on being louder, brighter or more intrusive to capture shopper focus, this is not necessary with floor communications that rely on the power of this human orienting reflex. We will simply tend to pay attention regardless of how flashy the stimulus is. If this research holds water, it stands to reason that floor marketing with compelling messaging and creative is an excellent venue to impact the buying behavior of consumers.

There is a potential caveat to relying too heavily on this formula, though: biologists have long known that anything that distracts us is very effective at first, however familiarity erodes the efficacy of what was once novel. But, if our experience is that the interruption always carries with it useful information, reflex gives way to a voluntary, automatic learned behavior to always pay attention to the venue at hand. Thus, to have consistently strong results with any kind of interruption marketing, it must carry with it some benefit to the viewer. I saw this very effect come to pass with online advertising, as anything new and different always garnered gangbuster response but eroded as viewers became accustomed to it (and it all too often didn't offer anything of benefit to the viewer).

All of this comes together to support beneficial proxemic marketing as a must have on the store marketing plan. Ensuring that the messages are consistently valuable will "train" shoppers to continue paying attention by rewarding them. From my viewpoint, this makes perfect sense. However, I do feel that there is a saturation point to respect that retailers must closely guard. In other words, if the floor becomes a cacophony of "visual noise" we might train shoppers to filter all floor messages out. This certainly makes a strong case for the use of digital messages, so I understand why LevelVision has taken the time to share the research. I also think that as an industry we must passionately respect the "efficiecy erosion" issue and be very careful to not use proxemic tools to blast messages as loudly and intrusively as possible. We've already learned that this is a short-term win but I'm not sure everyone in our industry respects this quite yet.

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Book review: POPAI's The Power of Marketing at-Retail

Author: Bill Gerba on 2008-06-05 08:30:30

As we mentioned in last week's summer reading list, POPAI's tome about The Power of Marketing at-Retail has been on our short list of "must read" books for quite some time. The third edition, which just came out a few months ago, includes some very useful new additions. The new chapters cover design aesthetics and, of course, this newfangled digital signage stuff. The bottom line: if you're even thinking about putting digital screens into a retail environment, you should read this book.

So I suspect lots of you might go get the book, and then immediately open it up to the digital signage chapter. But why? You probably already know most of what's there, since you've already read a whole book on the same topic, co-written by the same author -- Lighting Up the Aisle, by Laura Davis-Taylor. And if you're reading this blog, chances are you already know a thing or two about digital signage anyway. However, if my experience talking with new customers is at all typical, there's a good chance that lots of you aren't so familiar with the inner workings of retail marketing, merchandising and POP displays. While these topics might seem parochial or even irrelevant to some, even a brief flip through the POPAI book should tell you otherwise. As I've said before, you must understand the venues that you're going to be working in. So in short, consider these topics to be at the very base of your retail-oriented digital signage education.

How can you get the most out of POPAI's book? I recommend you start with Chapter 10: "Global Trends in Point-of-Purchase Advertising", which was written by the book's editor, Robert Liljenwall. You'll quickly get your bearings in the world of retail marketing, as Liljenwall explores some of the techniques that seem to work well across cultures. After that, you should head back to Chapter 1: "From Marketing Management to Marketing-at-Retail", by Northwestern's Francis J. Mulhern. At a mere eight pages, it's a lightning-quick introduction to the dramatic shifts taking place in retail marketing today, as well as an explanation of some of the similarities and differences between marketing in a retail environment and elsewhere.

Having covered the business basics, your next stop should be Chapter 2 ("Consumer Behavior at the Point-of-Purchase"), followed by Chapter 6 ("P-O-P Advertising Design and Creativity"). In Chapter 2, McGill University's Hugh Phillips dissects the shopping experience in an attempt to illustrate why we behave the way we do in stores (my take: we're irrational creatures of habit). I also love his section on the shift from "tactical" to "strategic" marketing, which we continue to see every day as more brands and CPG companies continue to (finally!) make in-store and out-of-home essential components of their multi-channel campaigns. Chapter 6 is written by James Eby at Wunderman. It focuses on the process of creating great creative, rather than the specific techniques (color, type, etc.) that go into the creative. Starting with the assignments and tasks that a POP marketing team might undertake (brainstorming, identifying the objective, etc.), he quickly takes us through a day in the life of a creative retail marketing group.

Next, I recommend you take a little break from the book and check out our own compendium on designing content for digital signage. These articles should give you a better feel for the similarities and differences between working on a digital medium versus the static ones found in stores today, and fit in especially well with the points from Chapter 6 of the book.

From there, how to best navigate through the rest of the book is up to you. Interested in the measurement debate, and how it affects brands, retailers and marketers alike? Check out Chapter 5 on "Post Promotion Evaluation". Are you more sales-focused? Get a better feel for some of the sales promotion tools used in retail stores, how they work, and their relative strengths and weaknesses in Chapter 4: "Sales Promotion Planning". I'd recommend checking out at least a few of the updated "Trends in Retail Marketing..." chapters, which are written by various analysts, retailers and brand marketers, plus Rick DeHerder's chapter on project management. That last one should be particularly eye-opening for those who haven't come from a retail or POP background -- the project management for static POP projects can be just as challenging as for a digital signage deployment. In the end, even the best-managed projects find that huge numbers of their displays never get deployed, are deployed incorrectly, or end up getting installed at the wrong place and time. Talk about frustrating! At least with digital signage, once the screens are out there, you pretty much know that your content is going to show up when and where you want it to -- provided you didn't make any mistakes scheduling it, of course.

While we're talking about POPAI, I also want to let you know about a neat event taking place next week. On Thursday, June 12th, they'll be conducting an Introduction to Digital Signage webinar, which I'll be presenting. This particular program probably isn't a good fit for most of the readers of this blog -- many of whom eat, sleep and dream digital signs. But if you know somebody who's just beginning to learn about the industry, or if you have a client or partner that needs a little help getting started, this is a great, cheap, and vendor-neutral way for them to jump in head first. This webinar will be given by a different member of POPAI's Digital Signage Advocacy group about every other month, so don't worry if you can't make it this time. If you'd like to register for the webinar, click here to sign-up. I hope to see you on the call!

We got some good comments last week on the "summer reading list" article mentioned above, but I'm always eager to learn more.  So which boo ks, websites, and other resources would you recommend to someone who's just starting out in this industry? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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Introduction to digital signage webinar coming up on June 12th

Author: Bill Gerba on 2008-05-28 16:58:11

If you're already an expert in the field of digital signage, this webinar isn't for you.  But if you're just starting out in the industry, or if you have a client or partner that is, it will give you an excellent introduction to the exciting world of digital out-of-home media.

Specifically designed  to help newcomers see past the industry hype and focus on the projects, business cases and best practices that have been successful in the real world, POPAI's Introduction to Digital Signage webinar is a great way to spend an hour of your time --  and only $50 -- to jump-start your understanding of what works and what doesn't in the digital signage world.

The topics we'll cover include:

• An introduction to the digital signage market with some basic market history and analysis,
• A look at some of the most common usage scenarios,
• An explanation of the components used in typical digital signage networks,
• A discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of using digital signage, and
• An examination of some of the most common pitfalls and problems that occur, and ways to avoid them in the first place.

So please join us on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 1:00pm EDT

If you're interested, you can click here to sign up now!

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The in-store shopper profiling debate

Author: Laura Davis-Taylor on 2008-05-20 09:34:56

On Tuesday, RetailWire ran a BrainTrust query on a hot topic of debate for the Marketing at Retail space: whether or not we should digitally profile shoppers while in-store for marketing insights.

The technologies that enable this are originally intended for shopper gaze tracking, allowing retailers to understand how many people walked by a screen or display, how many looked, at what and for how long. This is exciting, as it can o pen the door to real-time analytics that allow us to respond according to what works — and what doesn’t.

The issue at hand is that some of the firms behind this technology can also “flip the switch” to track shopper demographics such as age, ethnicity and sex. Conceptually, the idea is to “auto serve” content geared towards the type of shopper walking by and ensure that it’s as relevant as possible.

As the author of the query, I stand firm behind my opinion that we are in the midst of increased consumer sensitivity to privacy and that we should be very, very cautious before charging ahead with this kind of shopper profiling. I found the results to the query interesting however, with some clear splits on if we should or should not venture into these waters. Most felt that gaze tracking was safe, but once we start doing demographic profiling it becomes scary turf.

Mark Lilien of the Retail Technology Group had an interesting perspective, feeling that gaze tracking tools would be accepted as long as the retailer posts a sign telling folks that the store uses video surveillance. But rather than making it seem like an invasion of privacy, convey it in a positive light such as, "we're using the finest technology in the world to help us stock what our customers want most".

What do you think? Should in-store marketers install gaze tracking systems? Should they also track and profile shopper demographics?

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